Department of Biological Sciences, University of Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh, PA, USA.
The Holden Arboretum, Kirtland, OH, USA.
Nature. 2021 Sep;597(7878):688-692. doi: 10.1038/s41586-021-03890-9. Epub 2021 Sep 8.
Mechanisms that favour rare species are key to the maintenance of diverse communities. One of the most critical tasks for conservation of flowering plant biodiversity is to understand how plant-pollinator interactions contribute to the maintenance of rare species. Here we show that niche partitioning in pollinator use and asymmetric facilitation confer fitness advantage of rarer species in a biodiversity hotspot using phylogenetic structural equation modelling that integrates plant-pollinator and interspecific pollen transfer networks with floral functional traits. Co-flowering species filtered pollinators via floral traits, and rarer species showed greater pollinator specialization leading to higher pollination-mediated male and female fitness than more abundant species. When plants shared pollinator resources, asymmetric facilitation via pollen transport dynamics benefitted the rarer species at the cost of more abundant species, serving as an alternative diversity-promoting mechanism. Our results emphasize the importance of community-wide plant-pollinator interactions that affect reproduction for biodiversity maintenance.
有利于稀有物种的机制是维持多样化群落的关键。保护开花植物生物多样性的最关键任务之一是了解植物-传粉者相互作用如何有助于维持稀有物种。在这里，我们使用整合了植物-传粉者和种间花粉传递网络与花部功能性状的系统发育结构方程模型，展示了在生物多样性热点地区，传粉者利用的生态位分离和非对称促进如何为稀有物种赋予适应优势。共同开花的物种通过花部性状过滤传粉者，而稀有物种表现出更大的传粉者专化性，导致传粉介导的雌雄适合度高于更丰富的物种。当植物共享传粉者资源时，通过花粉运输动态的非对称促进以更丰富物种的代价使稀有物种受益，这是一种促进多样性的替代机制。我们的研究结果强调了影响生物多样性维持的种间传粉者相互作用的重要性。
